Ask The Experts: Frequently Asked SEO Questions

For our blog series, Ask the Experts, we asked our Digital Marketing Team to submit their clients’ most frequently asked questions. Our leadership team provided their answers to help hoteliers grow their digital marketing knowledge.

Today, Sean D. Francis addresses familiar search engine optimization terms and topics such as, “What is a good check rate percentage?”

What is bounce rate? What is a good bounce rate percentage?

Bounce rate is the percentage of people who come to the site, take no additional action, and leave. There is no set ‘good bounce rate’. A page’s bounce rate is tied directly to the purpose of the page. A page intended to give the visitor a simple piece of information may have a high bounce rate, but it is accomplishing exactly what it is supposed to.

For hotel websites, a bounce rate under 45% is quite good. Individual pages like the contact page will have a higher bounce rate while rooms pages will have a lower bounce rate.

What is check rate? What is a good check rate percentage?

Check rate is the percentage of visitors click through to see what rate a room is for a specific date.

A ‘good’ check rate depends on many factors for a hotel, like the market and the traffic coming to the site. As a good rule of thumb, a check rate for the entire site over 33% is good. A check rate over 50% is ideal.

Looking for simples ways to boost your online performance? Check out a few simple design and layout changes you can make on your hotel’s website in 3 Conversion Hacks to Drive More Direct Revenue.

What is a good percentage of desktop to mobile visitors?

The percentage of mobile visitors to your site is not something that can be classified as good or bad. Website owners have seen the number of mobile visitors surpass the number of desktop visitors in the past couple of years.

Keeping the increase of mobile users in mind, if the number of mobile users visiting the site is below 30%, there might be an issue with how Google is indexing the site for mobile users. Checking out how the site looks on various mobile devices becomes a priority in this situation.

Learn how mobile users differ from desktop users in Mobile Traffic on Hotel Websites.

Why are we not ranking/ ranking poorly for X search?

Where your site ranks for specific keywords is exciting and feels important. Keyword ranking reports once were a big deal but they are a vanity metric. Great, you are ranking on the first search engine results page for a term. Is that term driving reservations or engagement the hotel?

Results matter more than keyword ranking. If the hotel should rank for a term but still does not show up in the searches for that term, then a closer look needs to be taken at the page. Questions that should be asked about the page are “Is the page in Google’s index?”, “Is the page getting any traffic from organic search?”, and “What keywords are generating traffic for the page?” These questions can be answered by doing a site: search on Google, checking the Landing Page report in Google Analytics, and looking at the Query data from Google Search Console.

Are there questions you would like to ask our leadership team? We are always excited to discuss SEO, social media, PPC, website design and development, email marketing, and all digital marketing topics. Contact us with your questions and we will answer them in one of our upcoming Ask The Experts articles.

Share this post
Need marketing help?